1000 fingers, from ages 7 to 70, built a massive sculptural tribute to the late architectural visionary, Jean Christoph Kling, at the Renaissance Bridges conference in Banff.

5 meters in diameter and assembled from 50,000 tinkertoy-like parts, the gossamer model was the largest of its type ever attempted.

Kling dedicated his life to adapting ggoldenh geometry, which underlies the structure of universe, to architecture forms. This never-before-realized design came from a prolific portfolio of architectural forms Kling left after his untimely death in March of this year. The Banff installation was the first organized effort of his associates, many of whom attended the Bridges conference, to carry his work forward.

Golden geometry is a universal language bridging art and mathematics, that transcends cultural, political, economic and geographic boundaries. 150 mathematicians and artists from all over the world (and several of their children) assembled the small plastic Zometool components into superstructures that became the final sculpture on Wednesday. The work took some 250 person-hours, performed during breaks between presenting and attending talks such as gSymmetry and Transformation in the Musical Planeh and gThe Unique 11-Pointed Star Polygon of the Topkapi Scroll.h

Although it was built entirely from points and straight lines (i.e., nodes and struts) the model looked like a 3-dimensional gspirographh drawing, with organic curves that mimic life forms. The underlying structure was derived from a shadow of a 6-dimensional cube.